Ramblings and observations about sci fi, fantasy and whatever I feel like carrying on about

Sunday, April 5, 2015

Sci Fi Trifles: A Ninja/Power Ranger/Shogun Warrior-style Spider-Man?

Surely
everybody reading this site is familiar with the iconic Marvel
superhero Spider-Man who has become a household name since making his
big splash in comics back in 1962 (and more recently on the big screen). But did you know that back in the
1970’s that the Japanese did a live action television series featuring
an altered version of the character (which is not to be confused with
the short-lived CBS series from 1977)? And that this foreign made version
gave us a series that looked something like the web crawler meets Ninjas
meets The Power Rangers meets the Shogun Warriors meets Ultraman?

You see, Marvel entered into a licensing agreement back then with
Toei Company that allowed for Japanese adaptations of several of their
better known comic book characters. Toei started with
Spider-Man and produced a 41 episode series with a character whose
costume and powers closely resembled the Marvel version, but who added quite a few changes from the original. This web crawler had alien
origins and he received his powers from his 400 year old “brother” from the
planet Spider (where else?) and had to fight the sinister Professor
Monster who commanded the Iron Cross Army. Along with his customary
powers, the Japanese Spider Man had at his disposal the giant Shogun Warrior-like
robot “Marveller”, a super-high tech car, and a vast assortment of other
high-tech little gadgets.

The series quickly headed into Power Rangers
type absurdity with episode titles like “To the Flaming Hell: See the
Tears of the Snake Woman”, “The Hero’s Shining Hot Blood”, and “From the
Unexplored Amazon: Here Comes the Mummified Beautiful Woman”. It’s all
great cheesy fun and definitely worth seeing as Marvel is currently streaming several episodes
of the show on their website. And we can only hope this one will get a
good DVD treatment before too long as it would be great viewing late at
night with a group of friends and plenty of alcoholic beverages!